Eight years after the murder of Harvey Dent by Batman spurred Gotham into giving their law enforcement agencies and courts some teeth, the streets have been cleaned of organised crime and Batman has not been needed. With Rachel dead, though, Bruce Wayne has been an unfocused recluse, physically and mentally rusty. An encounter with a beautiful thief and a boardroom threat to Wayne Enterprises drag him back to reality and he realises that Gotham may not be as healthy as he presumed and that the Batman may be needed once more.

6/10

Nolan’s less intense, more fun, threequel has some really cool stuff, tidy, if anachronistic, one-liners, a genuine sense of scale and gives Bale’s Batman an impressive-feeling end story. The decision to make Batman weaker through lack of practice to enable his defeat and linking the plot to Batman Begins is surprising and ingenious. But, there are too many questions and unconvincing hops through the agreeably ambitious and ultimately impenetrable and majestically unconvincing plot. How does Gordon’s resignation speech help anything other than the plot? Why does Joseph Gordon-Levitt’s otherwise cool copper know Bruce Wayne is Batman? Where did Bane get those bikes from in the Stock Exchange? How does Bane’s plan reset the status quo in Gotham and why does it not involve his own safety? Curiously, like Nolan’s previous film, Inception, second time around everything is much, much worse. That said, Rises is certainly captivating and interesting and Nolan’s Batman films are one of the great trilogies, but it never nails the hero moments the way Begins did and the finalé was done far better in The Iron Giant.

This movie contains bad language, strong melee violence, sensuality

Classified 12A by BBFC. Persons under the age of 12 must be accompanied by an adult.